Mulberry

Fashion is not a game for the faint of heart. Johnny Coca, appointed in 2014 at Mulberry to oversee ready-to-wear, accessories and their breadwinning category - handbags - knows that better than anyone. A former Céline whizz kid, he is currently overseeing the reinvention of a company coming back from the brink after a disastrous attempt to shift up a gear to hyper-luxury status, and the results are good: pre-tax profits rose by a fifth last year. So, the commitment to “affordable luxury” is paying dividends; Coca’s forays into ready-to-wear have been warmly received; and the bags, jewellery and shoes are looking fly again.

Which begs the question – why rock the boat? For as other brands abandon the see-now, buy-now shake-up experiment (Tom Ford, Thakoon) amid mutterings that it’s not working elsewhere in the industry, either, Mulberry is charging on into instant gratification territory. This season it eschewed a London show in favour of a Paris presentation, held back a number of looks under embargo for the spring/summer 2018 collection, and announced it will redouble the focus on bags for the next six months, until it’s ready to align with the "on-season" retail calendar with a catwalk show in London, in February 2018.

Why Craft Is At The Core Of Mulberry

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Will it work? The British brand is convinced it will. “Mulberry’s direct-to-consumer business is already very good,” Charlotte O’Sullivan, the brand’s marketing and digital director, told Vogue. “15 per cent of Mulberry’s business is digital sales - with other luxury brands it’s somewhere closer to six to eight per cent. Wholesale is only a small proportion of our business, so our ability to get our product to market, to the customer, is impressive.” Add to that two Mulberry-owned factories, in Somerset, where they can turn product around quickly, and the signs of success are there.

And what of the clothes? I’m forbidden from sharing what was in one of the four high-ceilinged rooms on L’avenue d’Iéna - incidentally, the very same avenue where Christopher Newman dines with Mr. and Mrs. Tristram at their apartment in Henry James’s The American! – but as for the rest, I can report Coca’s obsession with the Queen Mother, Ascot, English country houses and summer garden parties is still raging. Oh, and dusty aristocratic collections of porcelain. “I was in the kitchen of a big house in the English countryside and there was a whole wall of porcelain,” Coca, resplendent in a royal purple waistcoat and shorts, told Vogue. “I said, ‘Where did you get all of this?’ and the lady said it was generations of porcelain handed down to her. In other countries they would sell it - but in England, they keep it, they keep everything.” Coca took the porcelain motif (he spent weeks trawling antique shops in Kensington near Mulberry HQ, sourcing unusual plates and vases) and ran with it: painterly scenes appeared on organza Edwardian dresses and "Merry Widow" wide-brimmed hats (created by Noel Stewart); little pots formed heels on rhinestone and knotted leather shoes; he even took the washed-out porcelain colours of pale mauve, lemon yellow and teal for bag hues.

What Happened At... PFW

Paris Fashion Week

04 Oct 2017

He was also thinking about parties. “English girls love to dress up in the evening, especially for garden parties - they look perfect, it’s quite spectacular, you don’t know which way to focus,” said Coca. Start with their jewellery: the Mulberry girl has numerous options next season, from bejewelled dangling toucans, to beaded tassels, to enamel rubber-plant leaves. Next, bejewelled dresses, cut loose to hang from the body in lush Joshua Reynolds pinks and blues, and ruffled ones too: a saffron silk taffeta dress caught Vogue’s shopping editor’s eye. Don’t forget the bejewelled bags: the Lynton mini bucket was the star, in soft lamb nappa studded with gems or printed with super chic diagonal stripes.

It wasn’t all going-out grace: jacquard cocktail coats with little frilly wrists and stripy silk midi dresses were good day-to-night options, while tailoring - something Coca mastered last season - felt fresh in Kelly green and a neat Seventies workwear brown (don’t miss those knotted buttons, inspired by naval knots). “I wanted it to feel personal but authentic. I was looking for things that make me laugh - happiness and enjoying the moment,” said Coca. It’s been said before, but joy is as good a message as any.